


Motoroil Matchmaker

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Flirting, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2018-12-08 05:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11639760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nyx was a cashier at a grimy, backwoods liquor store, lying his way underneath the hood of this guy’s Jeep while he was in crisis, and his mouth decided it was a good idea to flirt.





	1. backwoods blues

**Author's Note:**

> I'm Santa Clause this summer. Happy survival of your job training, wine dad!

“It’s a Friday night, I’d rather be pouring drinks than babysitting them.”

“No sampling the merchandise, I can hear that you’re tempted.”

“That’s my professional integrity you’re insulting!”

Libertus snorted on the other end, his derision the only sound on speaker phone in the empty liquor store. Nyx added a long huff to go along with it. His only other company between the full shelves of glass bottles was Drautos’ “Lucian Cruisin’ essentials playlist” and if he heard “Highway to Hell” growl over the speakers, one more time, he might start to believe he was on it. He could only listen to the same songs over and over again before he started to feel like the poster boy for the definition of insanity. Nothing ruined a good classic like endless repetition in association with a negative setting.

Island Spirits was sure starting to live up to its name. If no man was an island, this store certainly made Nyx feel like that saying was not even remotely true. It was a backwoods shop at the far side of Leide, miles opposite the bridge into Insomnia where the hub of customer traffic was at its most frantic. Whereas the rest of the top-named bars and grills in the region were a feeding frenzy of outgoing tourists and incoming commuters, the biggest crowd that Island Spirits ever got was a family of five in an RV looking for directions to the nearest haven.

Granted, Nyx had only been working at the liquor store for a little over a month, but he knew a dead end when he walked into one. He wasn’t sure how the store had stayed open for as long as it did – he was convinced that it ran solely on the hellfire spite of its owner and nothing else. But he hadn’t been hired to ask after his boss’s financial state, just to man the register when Drautos wasn’t there and stack shelves when he was.

It was a paycheck – one he should probably be more concerned with the source of, given how it didn’t always match up with the contents of the register at the end of every week. Conspiracy theories aside, he couldn’t complain. Drautos – while a humorless brick of a man, like the cement block of building around him – was generous with Nyx’s pay – “hard cash for hard labor,” he said (somehow, even his compliments sounded like insults) – and didn’t give him _too_ many reasons to dislike him.

They tolerated each other enough not to break open bottles on each other’s heads when business was at its most barren – although Nyx had seriously considered it some days. Nothing generated public interest like police tape.

“What are you wearing?” Nyx asked Libs, just to entertain himself.

“My heterosexuality and what’s left of my dignity.”

Nyx laughed, leaning back on his stool behind the counter and balancing on the back legs. The toe of his boot started to tap along to the music without his bidding, ankles crossed along the countertop while he waited for the old yellow clock on the wall to run out on his shift. The cracked plastic cover was clogged with brown dust, obscuring the faded lines circling the face as Nyx followed the tremulous tick of the hands.

“Is ‘dignity’ a little under ten inches, narrow and sort of oblong in nature; pale amber color in certain lighting? Pairs well with potato chips?”

“Like you said, it’s Friday night,” Libs replied, the hiss and pop of a beer bottle-cap making Nyx’s thoughts whine with vandal ideas of cracking open one of the old packs on the back shelf.

Before he could succumb to the miscreant thought, a noise like a very disgruntled sabertusk grumbled into the parking lot. Nyx wanted to scream. _Five minutes._ He closed up in five minutes, to the dot. He was ready to accuse Libertus of sending some plant over at the last second to get him to snap and end up on that late night show about catching shitty people in staged settings.

“Alright, I’ve gotta go,” Nyx sighed as the car shuddered to a stop in front of the store. “Might be late, depending on how long this customer is.”

“Aah right. You want skewers from Mal’s? My treat!”

“You’re the best.”

He hung up to the humble drawl of “yeah, yeah” and stood to face the storefront. The headlights stuttered off beyond the neon winking of the OPEN sign in the window. Nyx drummed his fingers against the counter, more annoyed with the fact that he was trapped in the rhythm of the oldies than he was at having to host a last-minute customer.

A small shadow of a man in black jeans and boots and a frayed gray Henley hopped down from the driver’s seat, giving the Jeep a glare of such fretful wrath that Nyx might have guessed it had once held him at gunpoint in a dark alley. He met his eyes through the window. A mix of relief and nerves warped across the stranger’s face, and Nyx had the damndest feeling that he’d be getting home to ice-cold take-out tonight.

The man pushed through the door, setting off the dull “ding dong” of the electronic bell. He shuffled up to the counter, hands wound up and twisting in the lanyard of his keys. Dark blue and printed with a myriad of common lake fish, Nyx noticed.

“Hey, um, if I buy something, do you have a phone I could use?”

Nyx raked a glance over him, head to toe. He couldn’t be older than twenty-one. If he was, he had such soft, angular features underneath an artful muss of coal-black hair that it gave him a boyish charm and no doubt took a few years off his age. He had to be over sixteen to drive, but Nyx had a sense that he wasn’t quite old enough to drink. He’d have to card him if he was going to buy something, and then decline him his good intentions of offering business in exchange for a favor. Better to avoid the inevitable awkwardness of that exchange altogether.

“You don’t need to buy anything, and could just tell me what your problem is for free.”

Nyx smiled in an effort to comfort the kid’s teeth out of gnawing a hole in the bottom of his lip. Lost, he figured. Out-of-towner coasting along the wrong road. Nobody this side of Leide could afford the shoes he was wearing. Boots like those, both functional _and_ stylish, were hard to come by without lopping off an arm to sell to go with the price-tag.

“Oookay,” the kid said, eyes narrowing as he considered Nyx. “Are you good with cars?”

No. Not even remotely. He hadn’t been able to afford a car of his own since getting run out of Galahd. He used to know his way around an engine when he was a teenager with nothing better to do but get into trouble on weekends. His mother sent him and Libs – as a chaperone, really – to volunteer at the local chop shop on the days where he was feeling particularly restless. The oily old woman that ran the place used to put them under all kinds of cars, but that had been ten, maybe fifteen years ago. He wasn’t sure that he could tell the difference between a carburetor and distributor anymore.

He could hear his inner Crowe needling him about getting old. Then, the little voice of logic in his head that often times sounded like Libertus screamed over her because, despite all of his very rusty experience to the contrary, he said, “Yeah, I know a thing or two.”

His own inner voice harmonized with Libs the Logical, adding a bombastic, “ _What the fuck are you doing?”_ to the crescendo. Then the kid smiled, tentative with relief, and inner Nyx changed his tune.

He might not remember too much about car mechanics, but he knew that he had every right to be shocked when he walked outside and saw what a mess the old thing was. Sure, it was clean, looked like it had been polished recently, and the tires were relatively new. But there were dents in the hood, scratches and chips littered the black paint, and the lights were foggy with dirt and dust. It was quite a contrast to the kid’s hundred-dollar shoes. Nyx gave a low whistle of amazement.

“I’d ask again what the problem is, but I think it’s going to be pretty hard to pin down.”

The kid glared at him, but it was weary with the weight of what must have been a hundred similar-such insults, as well as with the fact of his present predicament.

“It started crapping out on me a few miles back. Dashboard lights, radio, everything went dark. Barely had enough juice left to pull in here. Thank the Six you have a level parking lot. I was afraid I’d end up crashing into your store.”

A chill passed through his bones as a version of Drautos in a future where his store was demolished by a millennial in a shitty Jeep came after his ass with a fire-axe and his last fuck to give.

“Thanks, indeed,” Nyx muttered. “So, the whole thing’s dead then?”

“Pretty sure.”

The kid climbed back into the driver’s seat, Nyx following him around to lean on the open door and examine the dashboard as the key turned in the ignition. Sure enough, there wasn’t a single blip of life to the old thing. Not even a final curse of a spitting engine.

“Knew I shouldn’t have turned it off,” the kid groaned, pressing his forehead to the steering wheel.

“Battery’s probably dead,” Nyx guessed.

“Can’t be, it was just replaced last month!”

“Bad starter?”

“Also new.”

“Wow, really treating the old geezer right, huh?”

The kid laughed weakly, shaking his head against the worn leather of the wheel. “Starting to think it wasn’t worth it.”

Nyx was dying to know what could have possessed a seemingly well-off twenty-maybe-year-old to take such a decrepit skeleton of a car off the scrap pile. He almost asked, if only to prolong having to actually pop open the hood and pretend he knew what he was doing. But then the kid turned such forlorn blue eyes up at him from beneath the chaotic shade of his hair and Nyx somehow found himself at the front of the car.

A part of him hoped that he might be able to look at all of that apparatus and it would jog his memory. Maybe inspire some dormant instincts he may have retained from an adolescence spent deterring delinquency.

So much for all those theories about retentive memory. That or he really was getting that old. Barely past thirty and already on the cusp of dementia.

“So…” Nyx started, staring beneath the hood as the kid worried with his keys next to him. “It just died. Out of nowhere. You’ve been driving a dead car for how many miles?”

“A few. I don’t know, I was too busy watching my life flash before my eyes to count mile markers.”

“I can imagine,” Nyx laughed.

“Never thought I’d be taken for a joy ride by my own car.”

“Must be revenge for a history of automotive injustice.”

The kid laughed and Nyx felt mildly more useful. He may have lost his way of charming an engine into singing for him, but he could still charm a pretty boy in distress with comedy at a fifth-grade level.

“You’d think it might show me some mercy,” he said, bumping his foot against the front tire. “I saved it from a life of going to rust in the back lot of a welding supply store. Vacuumed it, washed it, gave it nice new essentials to live out the rest of its days, and this is how it repays me.”

“Cranky old coot must have never learned its manners.”

He was easy to make laugh and Nyx thought that was adorable. He had a face that begged to be laughing, his eyes lighting up and blowing open wide. His smile softened the sullen edges that sunk his expression with so much worry, revealed curves and contours that warmed his pale skin in the dusky light. Nyx didn’t catch himself staring until the kid’s eyes stalled for a moment before fluttering underneath dark lashes and ducking back down to the Jeep.

“So, umm, what do you think the problem is?”

_That you’re too sweet to disappoint_. He was such an idiot for getting his hopes up. All of his designated life coaches were throwing up a racket in the back of his head because _how could you?_ He was weak, that’s how. Dumb and weak and definitely not strong enough to handle the look of betrayal for being of no help when he answered.

“Um… If I had to guess? They might have installed a bad starter when you got it replaced. That or the battery isn’t holding a charge.”

“So, either I got screwed over or I’m wasting my time by investing in this thing?”

“Not necessarily!” Nyx hurried to comfort him, feeling like he was punched in the chest by the crestfallen look on his face. “Sometimes bad starters are the manufacturer’s fault, not the mechanic’s. As for the car in general… well…”

Nyx stared at the Jeep in search of a redeeming quality he could use to lift the kid’s spirits. He took too long though, the owner giving him a sad half-smile and reaching up to pull the hood down.

“Thanks for trying. Can we go back to Plan A? I’ll pay for the use of your phone with a beer buy?”

“Wait!” Nyx touched his arm to keep him from dropping the hood, quickly pulling back when his better senses blared alarm bells in his ear. “Have you ever jump-started a car before?”

“No. Have you?”

He cocked a brow at him and Nyx knew that he was caught, grimacing in embarrassment. “As you might’ve guessed, no. I’m not that good at cars. But! I am _killer_ at Moogle searches.”

Nyx pulled out his phone and thumbed in “how to jump-start a car” in the search bar. Drautos had a delivery van snoozing in the corner of the lot, gathering as much dust as the kid’s Jeep must have during it’s time in its own parking lot prison. Nyx glanced between his screen, with the handy video instructions he’d selected, and the kid’s skeptical stare.

“I’m trying to decide if I hate you or not for molesting my engine,” he replied to Nyx’s silent question.

“I did not molest it!” Nyx said, affronted. “You gave me your consent and everything!”

“Under false pretenses,” he laughed, the gentle sound soothing Nyx’s panicked nerves.

“Alright, you got me. I’m sorry. It’s not every day that a cute guy in need rolls up to this store. Gotta take my chances when they come.”

For a second, Nyx was afraid he’d broken the kid just as much as his Jeep. He blinked, about as surprised as Nyx himself was by the bold confession. _Creepy_. _That was just plain creepy to say._ He was a cashier at a grimy, backwoods liquor store, lying his way underneath the hood of this guy’s Jeep while he was in crisis, and his mouth decided it was a good idea to flirt. His car experience wasn’t the only thing that had gone rusty.

“Let’s get you back on the road,” Nyx said, hurrying over to the shadow of the delivery van to avoid the stare. “Um, you can charge your phone by the register. Dead, right?”

“Y-Yeah. Usually charge it in the car, but…”

He gestured at the dead Jeep. Nyx smiled and the kid turned away. Nyx’s chest swelled when he thought he might have seen a blush creeping over those soft cheeks.

Nyx pulled the delivery van closer to the Jeep, keeping an eye on the kid through the shop windows while he groped for an electrical outlet. As cute as he was, the self-preservationist in Nyx knew better than to trust a stranger by an unguarded cash register. But the guy was decent, as he thought, and didn’t give it a second glance. He was back outside as soon as his phone was charging, sidling as close to Nyx as he felt comfortable to study the instructional video.

Whether the battery was the true culprit or not, after careful cable application and a lot of fingers crossed, the Jeep roared back to life. The look of unbridled delight on the kid’s face from behind the windshield was worth all of Nyx’s awkward attempts to fix it in the first place.

“Thank you!” he gasped in relief, meeting Nyx at the beaming headlights as he returned the jumper cables to the van. “Thank you so much! Are you sure I can’t buy something or just pay you or anything for your help?”

“You can pay me by staying safe out there.” It was so hard not to use a line there, but he was certain he’d lost any shot at flirting with him by now. “Do you have far to go?”

“Not too far that I won’t make it, I don’t think.”

He retrieved his phone from inside and Nyx locked the place up after him, killing the broken fluorescent lights and securing all the doors before following him out. He put the delivery van back where Drautos deemed it must always remain and went to see the kid off.

“Do you need a lift or something?” he was asked from the driver-side window, brow creasing as the driver noticed Nyx’s lack of transportation.

“Nah. Home’s just a few blocks away. Be seeing you, kiddo.”

“Noctis.” They both balked at that, the wide blink of surprise on the kid’s face more shocked by the admission than Nyx was. Pink flushed across his face before he turned his gaze forward and put the Jeep in reverse. “That’s my name. And yeah, I guess I’ll be seeing you…”

“Nyx,” he provided for the blank space. “Drive safe, Noctis.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Noctis smiled down at him, then pulled out of the parking lot. Nyx even caught a slim hand in the window waving at him as he drove away on acrid fumes and a bucking engine.

He got a name. Which implied that there would be an opportunity to use it again. He hoped. It might drive him crazy, wondering if one day he would hear that cranky growl storm into the parking lot once more, but at least it gave him something to look forward to.


	2. backpedal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He didn’t hear the rattle and roar of an eldritch engine ripping its way up to Island Spirits again for _weeks._

Nyx was beginning to think that the only thing he’d gotten out of his roadside heroics was re-heated take-out and the use of the word “crush” as a painful verb rather than as a giddy noun.

He didn’t hear the rattle and roar of an eldritch engine ripping its way up to Island Spirits again for _weeks_. By the time he was given an opportunity to use the name awarded to him for his haphazard assistance, he had nearly forgotten it. Working in and out of as many places as he had, bargaining and marketing with as many people as he had, names had a tendency to reset at the end of every business day.

But he remembered _Noctis_ for days after that late night behind the counter. He remembered how bright his smile looked in the stuttering headlights, beaming like moonlight when the bulbs blasted to life. He remembered his expensive shoes hanging out from beneath the driver’s side door as he cursed at the ignition whenever it failed to respond. He even remembered the pattern on the lanyard he kept winding around his hands to keep them from enacting some violence on the dead Jeep for having the nerve to leave him stranded in the middle of the night at some backwoods, country-bumpkin beer joint.

That was all it was, wasn’t it. Nyx should have known that… No, not _should have_. He _did_ know that. _Idiot._ If he’d been in the guy’s shoes – considerably cheaper ones – he would have put the pedal to the metal and never looked back. The more days that Nyx half-heartedly glanced up at the toneless drone of the doorbell, the more he kicked himself for being so insufferably awkward that night.

He was wondering if his charm had run away to wherever his common sense went. He spent the work days afterwards practicing his smile and coercing customers into buying an extra bottle for that office party, building a little more confidence in himself with each successfully boosted transaction. He hadn’t lost it after all, it had just been the long day before the Jeep rolled up that took it out of him. It had just been the hunger of thinking about dinner, the frustration of not remembering the parts of an engine, the disarming blue eyes of his tarmac castaway, gilded silver in the startled headlights of the old Jeep.

It was just an off day, a weird night, just a lapse in his better judgment. He was brutally human, he was allowed a lapse every once in a while, he assured himself.

His mental self-help coach was taken out back and viciously shot to death the day a six pack skated across his counter with a quiet rasp of, “Hope you’re better with beer than you are with cars.”

He had nearly forgotten him. He had been right on the precipice of plummeting himself into complete forgetfulness, just one more day away from watching the phantom name murmured in his head part like an evening mist into the cold clarity of day.

Noctis gave him an uncertain smile from the other side of the counter, the prettiest damn shadow that ever darkened his door. Nyx’s mouth went completely dry of any naturally cultivated construct of witticism to use in response. Which was so damn tween romance novel that he was starting to get disgusted with himself. He’d survived his teenage years with the battle scars to prove it, he was not going to start having his mid-life crisis of adolescent regression at thirty, _hell no_. Especially not in front of this specter of shabby chic allure that had toyed along the edges of his thoughts for weeks.

Nyx gulped down the sandpaper plane carving up his throat and retreated to his customer service smile. It helped to have it to fall back on, the one thing he’d trained to be impenetrable for the sole sake of getting a leg up in the scant landscape of Lieden employment opportunities.

“I hope so, too,” he said at last. “I assume that’s why I’m here and not raking in the big bucks at an autoshop.”

Noctis’ eyes lightened above the crook of his smile, as if the humble curve of his lips emanated their own light to beam throughout his bright blue gaze. He’d stood a little bit hunched, shoulders turned a little bit inwards with his hands in his pockets, keys clicking beneath his fumbling fingers in one – Nyx could see the familiar lanyard snaking from the corner. Once Nyx acknowledged that he recognized him, the tension drained out of him like butter melting over the stove. His smile was just as warm.

“I don’t know. I was a little worried you might have moved on to your true calling by the time I came back.”

“And miss out on our fated reunion? Not a paycheck in the world that could tempt me away from that.”

It was a bold flirtation, even more so than his stumbling attempts the night they’d met, but it made Noctis snort in laughter. A genuine one, too. Not one of those pity laughs, the ones that were a little too high, a little too staccato on the bar, too heavily punctuated by the barely concealed undercurrent of nervousness. Noctis seemed to actually find him funny. Either he had a poor sense of humor, or there was still hope for Nyx in his “old age” yet. _Eat shit, Crowe!_

He prayed that he didn’t ruin it by being contractionally obligated to the integrity of Drautos’ establishment and having to ask, “Can I see some ID?”

Noctis blinked, a slight crease to his brow for a beat before he seemed to remember where he was and what he was doing. It was barely a breath of confusion, but it made Nyx’s pulse spike like a heart attack, thinking he’d undone any good work he might have accomplished to charm a grin out of Noctis. He’d quit this job if he had to get back in it. The relief he felt when Noctis finally fished for his wallet screamed at Nyx to never consider such a foolish idea again – it sounded a little like Libertus behind a rent notice.

“Right! Yeah, of course,” Noctis said.

“Sorry,” Nyx murmured. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, I’ve just gotta be safe.”

“Don’t worry, I get it! Trust me, I get this a lot. I look a lot younger than I am. My friends say I stopped aging at sixteen.”

“Well, well, don’t the gods just love you?”

“As if you have anything to complain about? They seem to love you more.”

Noctis raked a glance over Nyx before stalling whatever thought braved its way into his head enough to pay him the compliment, and resumed the search for his ID. Nyx was grateful that it was a slow business day. He could wade through the feeling of excitement and pride and all the other gooey things he was feeling without shirking his duties.

The store had just emptied of its previous customer when Noctis stepped up next in line. There was no one waiting to be rung up behind him, no one perusing the shelves that might call Nyx over to assist them. Drautos was out back handling the latest delivery and he didn’t expect to see him back in the store until it was time to close it up. Nyx wasn’t a very devout follower of the Hexatheon, but even he may be tempted to pay a little tribute to Shiva for granting him such fortunate circumstances.

Noctis was twenty-one and his card was legit, not that Nyx was looking too closely for signs that it wasn’t. He could tell from the people alone whether or not they were trying to pull one over on him more than he could tell from a piece of plastic. Noctis didn’t hesitate to prove his age, didn’t stare too intently at how Nyx roved over the card, as if he could will it into being authentic enough to score him some booze.

His eyes were on Nyx more than they were on the card. Which definitely would not have helped Nyx validate him for purchase if he were a more nefarious patron.

“Your birthday just passed, huh?” Nyx said conversationally, handing him back the card and ringing him up. “Happy belated birthday.”

“Yeah, thanks. Would’ve swung back here sooner if not for that. Had to do a lot of prep work.”

“Big party, huh? Sounds like fun. Hope a new car was wrapped up for you.”

Noctis flickered a glare up at him, but he was still smiling. It was nice to see that smile in the light of day. It was nice to see that smile in any light of any day, really. There was an allure to it in the evening, the palette of his skin taking on the neon lights from the signs in the shop window, or brushed gold from the decaying lights of his car. In the day, the lines of his face were a little sharper, the darkness of his hair a vivid contrast to the paleness of his skin. He was made of ink and moonlight, crafted from the enigmatic hues of nighttime.

_Shit, Nyx, don’t go getting stupid and poetic now._ He wasn’t sure which of his internal voices that was… It sounded a lot like himself. Which was comforting.

“The car was an early birthday present to myself, actually.” Even Noctis’ voice sounded like nightfall, smooth as a sunset with the unseen rasp of distant midnight wilds. “I did get a couple of new gadgets to make it run more like new though.”

“Should have gotten an oil drum and a torch.”

Noctis’ eyes shifted to the side, rolling slightly, as if he were all too familiar with the destructive sentiment. His smile twisted on a sour note, something about the resentment for his car striking an ugly chord on his pretty face. Nyx hurried to amend such a horrible atrocity.

“So long as it’s not going to get you killed, then I guess it’s the gift that just keeps on giving, huh?”

“It’s… something.”

“But not a gift?” Nyx tried.

Noctis growled, noncommittally. The cessation of a verbal response was telling enough.

He looked like he was tired of talking about his car, anyway. Like it was a regular topic of derision in his life. Nyx felt an acute stab of guilt cut right through him. As if he didn’t feel crappy enough about how poorly he handled the night they met, he’d probably made the poor kid feel like an utter fool for investing in the ancient vehicle at all.

He didn’t get the chance to apologize – not that he had any idea of where he might start. ( _I’m sorry for lying to you in your time of need and not being as mechanically inclined as I probably should be. I’m sorry for opening my big, dumb mouth and flirting with you when we were both panicking and in a state of complete distress. I’m sorry I made fun of your crappy car when all you probably wanted to do was get in it and get the hell away from me.)_ In truth, he thought it was oddly endearing that a man who could afford a wardrobe off of a runway didn’t feel that a dying Jeep sitting in a back lot wasn’t beneath him. He thought that the care he put into patching the hunk of junk up was… sweet. Probably more generous than the rickety old machine deserved, but sweet, nonetheless.

“Um, hey,” Noctis said then, his fishy, blue lanyard starting on its tight circuit around his knuckles. “I owe you so, I wanted to, um, buy you a drink. For helping me out that night. If you want.”

Nyx was so stunned by the offer that he miscalculated the sum for his order on the register. He tried not to feel too flattered and fluttery about the way he worded it. Like he was asking him on a date more than he was asking to pay his debt.

When he looked up at him to confirm whether or not he heard him right, he looked about as optimistically anxious as Nyx felt. The lanyard was going to leave marks on his skin from how tightly he had it coiled around his fingers. His eyes skittered across the counter-top as if they were searching through a script, scanning across the invisible lines for misprints in his own speech.

It was the color of his face that shoved Nyx flailing wildly into a plummeting descent off the cliff face of his self-control, a pale, peachy shade of pink just dusting along the plush arch of his cheeks. Nyx surprised himself with his own casualness, the simple slide of his palm over the six pack of beer hardly indicative of the hammering beat of his heart.

“I think you just bought me a drink, didn’t you?”

Noctis glanced up at him, then down at the beer, then back up at him again, short, skittish little movements like a cactuar fleeing an eighteen-wheeler. Then, his tentative smile steadied his rabbiting movements just enough to get a smoother sentence out. Still a little timid, still a little shaky, but more inspired by the absence of an outright refusal from Nyx.

“I was thinking more like coffee. But I don’t suppose you carry that here, huh?”

“Not unless you want to count Khalúa.”

Noctis wrinkled his nose and shook his head. _Fucking adorable._

“How about one of the diners I’m always passing around here?” he suggested while Nyx stuck a neon orange “PAID” sticker on the plastic carrier of his six pack. “Are they any good?”

“Kenny’s? Well, it’s not the Leville and their fries kind of taste like cat piss, but if it’s coffee you’re after then, sure. It’s a…”

“…date?”

Noctis stared at him with an intense look of equal parts horror and hope, about as surprised as Nyx was at the confirmation. That he wasn’t merely projecting a fantasy onto the man’s honor in paying him back. That he wasn’t delusional in this apparent “old age” that he was constantly teased about for thinking that a stranger so profoundly attractive and financially more superb than himself could find him equally attractive enough to ask out after the disastrous attempts he perceived as endearing himself to him. Nyx’s chest felt like it was shoved open wide and aired out of all the stagnation of social awkwardness that had annoyingly and abruptly tripped him up with Noctis until now.

“Yeah. It’s a date,” he said with a slow spread of a smile.

“Great! I’ll, um… pick you up here? Tomorrow, after your shift ends? Is that okay?”

“Sounds good. I close up at six. That’s not too late for you?”

“No! Not at all.”

Nyx slid the six pack over to him and counted out his change once he remedied the faulted sum he punched in from his inner crash of disbelief that this was even happening. He was careful to keep his hands on one side of the pack because he knew if he brushed Noctis’, that just might be the end of him for the day. His grin was already cheerfully taking him to an early grave along the galloping route of his heart. A touch would short-circuit it completely.

“Drive safe in that thing,” Nyx said in a strained effort to play it cool.

“Now I have a reason to.”

Nyx wasn’t sure if he imagined the wink or not, but he didn’t imagine the fond heat that collapsed like a tidal wave all beneath his skin. His mind was reeling, wondering – in more self-deprecating tones than he was used to hearing in himself – what the hell was wrong with Noctis that he would ever consider coming back here? Nyx hadn’t exactly made a stellar first impression. He’d tried his best to recover from his artless heroics, but the trying had only made it worse. While Noctis had driven away with a smile and his name to take with him on the way home, the silence in the parking lot since had discouraged Nyx from thinking he’d made less of a fool of himself than he really had.

None of the engines of Spirits’ patrons announced themselves nearly as angrily as Noctis’ Jeep. It was deafening, waiting for that metal monster to careen into his storefront and toss the driver into his waiting arms. He didn’t know if he hated Noctis for his timing – for coming back just at the point where Nyx was losing hope – or adored him even more for it. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that bullshit.

His heart was swelling as great as his ego for having all of his worries demolished in one go. And they were destroyed so kindly, pushed aside so gently and considerately and with all the humble care of someone who had as many worries of his own to take care of.

Noctis smiled the whole way back to his Jeep, Nyx could see him through the windows. When the engine blew on, it was a great deal quieter than it had been weeks ago. He didn’t begrudge himself too badly for not recognizing it before Noctis surprised him at the counter. Those must have been some new gadgets he got for his birthday to quiet that beast. A small seed of pride bloomed in the pit of Nyx’s stomach for feeling he had a small hand in helping the Jeep survive long enough for Noctis to return home for his birthday – and, after that, return to him.

He committed the renewed sound of the engine to memory as it pulled out of the craggy lot and puttered down the street. He liked to think Noctis was still smiling, even then. He wasn’t going to miss that sound again when it pulled up tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed reading! And look forward to a nice, dopey date next time ;)


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